To active trot one side of's horse, 455
The other would not hang an arse.[1]
A Squire he had, whose name was Ralph,[2]
That in th' adventure went his half.
Though writers, for more stately tone,
Do call him Ralpho, 'tis all one: 460
And when we can, with metre safe,
We'll call him so, if not, plain Raph.[3]
For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
An equal stock of wit and valour 465
He had lain in, by birth a tailor.
The mighty Tyrian queen that gain'd,
With subtle shreds, a tract of land,[4]
Did leave it, with a castle fair,
To his great ancestor, her heir; 470
From him descended cross-legg'd knights;[5]
Famed for their faith and warlike fights
Against the bloody Cannibal,[6]
Whom they destroy'd both great and small.
- ↑ This jest had previously appeared in an old book called Gratiæ ludentes, or Jests from the Universitis, 1638, where it runs thus: "A scholar being jeered on the way for wearing but one spur, said that if one side of his horse went on, it was not likely the other would stay behind."
- ↑ As the knight was of the Presbyterian party, so the squire was an Anabaptist or Independent. This gives our author an opportunity of characterizing these several sects, and of showing their joint concurrence against the king and church.
- ↑ Sir Roger L' Estrange supposes, that the original of Ralph was one Isaac Robinson, a butcher in Moorfields : another authority thinks that the character was designed for Pemble a tailor, one of the committee of sequestrators. Grey supposes, that the name of Ralph was taken from the grocer's apprentice, in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle." Mr Pemberton, who was a relation and godson of Mr Butler, said, that the 'squire was designed for Ralph Bedford, esquire, member of parliament for the town of Bedford.
- ↑ The allusion is to the well-known story of Dido, who purchased as much land as she could surround with an ox's hide. She cut the hide into extremely narrow strips, and so obtained twenty-two furlongs. See Virg. Æneid. lib. i. 367.
- ↑ A double allusion. Tailors sit at their work in this posture; and Crusaders are represented on funeral monuments with their legs across.
- ↑ Tailors, as well as Crusaders, are famed for their faith, though of different kind's. The words, bloody cannibal, are meant to be equally applicable to the Saracens and a louse.
